


The Culture of Cute

by alekszova



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, More angst than expected, One Shot, Soft Gavin Reed, gavin likes hello kitty, oblivious idiots but what else is new
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 14:45:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16914855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alekszova/pseuds/alekszova
Summary: Gavin and Connor go on a few dates together but neither of them realize what they actually are.





	The Culture of Cute

**Author's Note:**

> “Ever since they invented Hello Kitty, the world hasn't been the same. You can safely chart the rise of The Culture of Cute since that flat-faced skank started showing up everywhere.”

_October 23 rd_

They’ve been arguing for almost an hour now. It started off with complete silence, neither of them speaking a single word to each other before it started to escalate. Items set down violently or shoved forcefully with annoyed glances and eyerolls. Then, they started making quiet snide comments under their breaths towards each other until this.

The two of them are yelling, as if in a competition to see who can be the loudest or use the most expletives or get away with more vulgar language before Captain Fowler comes down from his office and has to break it up himself.

Connor should do something.

But he doesn’t.

Tina and Gavin look like siblings like this. It’s _amusing_. They are either the best of friends with absolutely no problems whatsoever or—

They scream.

“Gavin, if you don’t fucking shut your fucking mouth right now I’m going to—”

“You’re going to _what,_ Tina? Please, fucking enlighten me.”

Connor looks over and watches her body freeze, her mouth close. Then, she shifts. The anger seems to smooth from her face and is instead replaced with a small smile, a glance towards his phone, then his feet. _His feet?_

“I have a lot of ammo against you, _Gavin,”_ she says, her voice toned with niceties and calmness but cut through with a harsh sneer. “Things you might be embarrassed about. You might not even want to say _hello_ to any of your coworkers.”

“Tina, you wouldn’t fucking dare—”

“I would.”

Gavin goes quiet, too, but his rage doesn’t disappear like hers did. Instead it seems to boil inside of him, his hands closing into fists at his sides.

This is going to go badly. The entertainment factor has run it’s course. Connor stands, quickly crossing the room as the two look back in forth in silence as if they’re testing the other’s limits with just a gaze.

“Detective Reed,” he says, before he can really process the repercussions of his words. “Perhaps you’d like to go for a walk? There is a witness not far from here I need to speak to and they won’t allow me outside of the station on official business by myself.”

A truth and a lie.

Part of the reason he was allowed to return to work at the DPD was if he was under strict supervision. He broke into the a0chive room, after all. Hacked into their computers and sifted through evidence he wasn’t allowed to have. He might have been a machine, but that doesn’t negate how skeptical people still are of androids.

On the other side, there isn’t a witness. No reason to leave this place besides trying to stop a fight from breaking out.

“Yeah,” Gavin says, stretching the word out slowly, standing up and snatching his jacket from where it rests over the back of his chair. His eyes don’t leave Tina, they sit with a fiery glare in her direction as he tugs it on. “Sure. Let’s go.”

 

They step out into the cold air, Gavin pulling his jacket a little tighter around him and glancing over at Connor as he does the same. He can’t tell if androids actually feel the cold or not. They have emotions and most of them are built with the ability to tell what the temperature is around them, but actually feeling _cold?_

Probably not.

Connor is likely using an old mannerism installed in his head to make humans feel more comfortable. Or he could be mirroring Gavin’s actions. Wasn’t he meant to have a good social relations program? Isn’t part of getting someone to be friendlier doing minor things like copying body language?

“Which case is it?” he asks, following Connor as he starts down the sidewalk. “The mysterious missing body or the—”

“There’s no case,” Connor says, walking the tiniest bit quicker. “I was just… I thought it was best if you didn’t get yourself into an altercation.”

Something hits Gavin hard in the chest with those words. _Altercation?_ Like a fucking hand to hand fight? Like he would ever hit Tina? Like he would ever really hit a person that wasn’t a criminal he was chasing down or someone on the other side of sparring match for training?

Except he _had_ hit someone else.

He hit Connor. Made him collapse against the ground. _He was just an android._ A stupid piece of plastic with some ones and zeros in his head making him smarter than everyone else. But still. He _hit_ Connor. And, even more than that, even if he wasn’t going to fire the fucking gun he still aimed it at his head.

Neither of them had talked about it. It was for the best.

Except Connor has this idea that Gavin is a violent enough person to punch his one and only friend.

And Gavin doesn’t think like that anymore. He hadn’t realized it before. He thought deviants were just faulty machinery. That’s what they’d been told over and over again. It’s all the news had to say. _Deviants_ weren’t people. And then Markus came along.

And Connor appeared right along with it.

“Hey,” he says, reaching forward and grasping the sleeve of Connor’s jacket, tugging him to a stop. He feels his stomach twist and he lets go quickly, shoving his hand in his pocket and looking away from Connor’s face so he doesn’t have to say it and watch his features move the way they do.

And,

They haven’t been this close to each other in a while. It’s making him think of too many different things that he shouldn’t be thinking about.

If an android’s lips are soft or if they are like marble statues.

How smooth and uncalloused his hands must be if Gavin were to hold them.

Does Connor know enough about how he’s looking at him now to realize these thoughts running through his head?

“Sorry,” he finally blurts out. “For hitting you.”

“Excuse me?”

He heaves out a heavy sigh and looks back to him, against his better judgement. Because Connor’s features are so soft and vaguely confused and his head is tilted in the most obnoxious way possible, “I said I’m fucking sorry I hit you, alright?”

“Oh,” he says, like he needed it repeated the second time to understand the words right. Maybe because of how rarely (or rather, how he _never)_ apologizes. “It’s alright.”

“No—”

“I didn’t feel it,” Connor replies with a shrug, and it must really be forgotten to him because he offers Gavin a smile that seems genuine. “You’re forgiven, Gavin.”

_Gavin._

He has only been called _Detective Reed._

It’s selfish of him to think of this instead of whether or not Connor is telling the truth right now.

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” Connor confirms. “Would you like to go to the park? It’s quite close to here. We could walk for a little bit.”

 _Like a date?_ He wants to ask, but he can’t say those words sarcastically like he would need to. Connor wouldn’t want to take him out on a date, and it’s stupid to think of it like a _date_ anyways. Walking around in the park isn’t a date. Maybe if they had food it would classify, and then he would be well past the opportunity to make a joke about something he craves so badly.

“It’ll give you time away from Tina,” Connor continues, the smile disappearing from his face a little bit each second. “You two can look at the situation a little bit more objectively if you aren’t at each other’s throats.”

“Right.”

 

Their paces are strangely matched. Gavin walks slow, but it seems like he is putting an effort into staying matched to Connor’s speed. He’s usually faster. Always trying to get whatever task at hand done as quickly as possible. Normally when they work together, Connor has to keep up with him. Always a little bit faster than he’d prefer.

But today, Gavin is matching _his_ pace instead. And Connor is walking slower than normal, trying to drag this out a little bit more than he needs to. He tells himself it’s because Gavin is angry, Tina is angry, they are both angry and they both need the time to calm down.

But he also likes the way Gavin looks when he glances out towards the park and spots a dog running back to a human with a ball in his mouth. And he likes the way Gavin glances up to the clouds and mumbles something about one of them looking like a tree. And he just like the way Gavin _looks_ sometimes.

(He doesn’t like him. It would be too difficult a thing to like Gavin.

He’s just aware of all the things that make up an attractive human being.)

And, if he walks slow enough, if he doesn’t move when Gavin’s path leads him a little bit to the left, their hands brush against each other.

For a split second.

And then Gavin has his in his pocket for a few minutes before they drop to his side and it happens again.

He counts each one. He keeps a record of how long their skin has been in contact during this walk.

_Ten seconds._

He doesn’t know what to do with this information.

He is most certainly doesn’t know why he is trying to remember it.

“Oh fuck,” Gavin says, suddenly walking a little quicker. “They have ice cream.”

“It’s October, isn’t it a bit cold—”

“If they’re fucking selling it you bet your fucking plastic ass I’m eating it.”

“G—Gavin,” he says, the name stumbling against his tongue as he walks after him towards the little ice cream truck. “I—”

“Give me one of those Hello Kitty ones,” he says to the man, pulling his wallet from his pocket and sliding the money across the ledge. He glances back to Connor, what looks like the want of a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “You want one?”

“Androids can’t eat.”

“Thanks,” he looks back to the man and takes the ice cream and change, pocketing it and walking away. “Some do, don’t they?”

“They are programmed and designed with the function. Much like sex androids,” he says, then looks away quickly. “Only if it’s necessary.”

“And it’s not necessary for you?”

“No,” he says. “Except…”

“Except?”

“The other half of that,” Connor says, refusing to meet his gaze. He focuses them instead on Gavin’s hands as he tears the wrapper off the ice cream and drops it into a trashcan. It’s a cat shaped face, soft white with a pale pink bow on one of the ears. Cute. Not at all what he’d expect of Gavin.

“The other half?”

“S-sex androids.”

He makes the mistake of looking up to Gavin’s face and sees the smirk on his face as he licks the side of his ice cream, “Yeah?”

“It was a concern of CyberLife that I may need to go undercover in an Eden Club. It was a possibility. So it’s—”

“A _function_ you have?”

“Yes.”

“You seem awfully embarrassed about it.”

“It’s not something—”

“That you enjoy?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, so you’re a virgin?”

Connor sighs and turns away, “We should get back to the station.”

“No, I think this is a great topic to discuss and we aren’t in a work environment so it’s all good—”

“I would prefer not to talk about my sex life with you, Gavin,” he says, walking quicker. He knows Gavin is trying to keep up with him, but he doesn’t care. He’ll abandon him if he has to.

“Alright, alright,” he replies. “I’m sorry. No talk of sex.”

Connor pauses and looks back to him, about to say something but he can’t remember what it was when he sees Gavin’s face. A little flushed, a small trace of both amusement and regret, a spot of ice cream against his nose.

Even if he wasn’t so surprised that this is the second time _Gavin Reed_ has _apologized_ to him in _one day_ (!) he doubts he would be able to know what to say right now either way.

“You’ve got—” he holds in a sigh, because he knows how it will come out. A little bit dreamy and a little bit lost and a little bit too easy to tell that he might like a man that once held a gun to his head. “Ice cream. On your nose. You should clean it off.”

“Hm?” Gavin reaches up his arm, rubs his nose against the sleeve of his jacket. “Did I get it?”

_No._

“Yes.”

Because he really doesn’t know if he can handle that expression Gavin made when he scrunched up his nose and rubbed it against his sleeve while holding a Hello Kitty ice cream. He looks so adorable right now Connor thinks he might actually combust.

He is so sure of it, in fact, he is checking his biocomponents for damage on their way back to the station. But nothing is wrong. Everything is fine.

Gavin might be cute but he’s also the man that once held a gun to his head.

If he repeats that to himself enough, maybe the _cute_ factor will fade away.

But so far it hasn’t worked out.

 

_November 6 th_

He likes this place. It’s quiet and empty during this time of year, and quiet and empty is what he needs. It is a combative measure from what is inside of his chest. Loud and crowded and coming back with all of the things that happened a year ago. Death and decay and blood and bones and cruelty and chaos.

This silence is good.

The waves against the edge of the beach help soothe the sounds of gunshots and screams, the wind on his synthetic skin helps dissolve the feeling of metal in his hands and Thirium on his fingertips.

The main road to the beach is far enough away he can’t hear the sounds of the cars on it, for which he is thankful. He doesn’t like busy streets. He doesn’t like the sound of fast traffic zooming by. He feels safer when he is inside of a car, where the damage to his body would be reduced significantly.

Although, he is in a constant state of awareness that he could still be crushed and killed if there was an accident.

Connor isn’t supposed to be thinking about this. He isn’t supposed to be thinking about anything. He asked for the day off to have a few hours of peace and quiet before he comes back. Just one day of nothing.

His eyes close, he tries to focus on the waves, the wind, the car—

The car?

His eyes open and he turns around, looking towards the beat-up car that pulls to a stop at the edge of the parking lot. He already knows it’s Gavin by the vehicle, but for some reason he is still surprised when he steps out and looks over towards where Connor sits in the sand.

He waits as Gavin makes his way towards him and Connor pushes upwards, standing to greet him. Like he should reach out and shake his hand or wave. He does neither, feeling stiff and awkward.

“What are you doing here?” Connor asks.

“Was gonna ask you the same question.”

He debates this for a moment, tossing the pros and cons back and forth of telling the truth.

What does he have to lose, though?

Gavin already dislikes him, possibly _hates_ him.

“I came here to think,” he says, looking back to the empty waters. Too cold for humans to be swimming, and androids don’t necessarily swim. “It’s… peaceful.”

“Right,” Gavin replies. “You weren’t at work.”

“I took the day off.”

“Oh. I—I didn’t realize. No one told me.”

They stand in silence for a minute, Connor watching the waves but feeling and knowing that Gavin is watching _him._ He just can’t bring himself to steal a quick glance and dissect _how_ he is watching him.

Because if it turns out that his features are twisted into disgust or hate or annoyance, it will ruin the possibility that it’s something else. That maybe the two of them could be okay. That they could have a friendship. That Connor might be able to talk with him about all the bad things that have happened between the two of them.

“Do you swim?” Gavin’s voice is abrupt, breaking the silence with a sudden jolt. “Do androids swim?”

“They can.”

“But do _you?”_

“No,” he says. “The water is too cold. It could freeze biocomponents if I was in too long. It’s too dangerous.”

“What if…” Gavin steps closer to the water, just at the edge where the waves come up but just a few inches away from hitting his feet. “What if you go in just a little bit, just your feet?”

“Why would I do that?”

He shrugs and turns around to face Connor, “I don’t fucking know. It’s a beach. You’re meant to be in the water, yeah?”

He could argue this. Explain on the scientific reasons that a beach does not exist solely for human (or android) enjoyment, but Gavin is kicking off his shoes before he can start laying out the facts.

“Gavin,” he says, taking a quick step forward. “It’s too cold, you’ll catch a cold—”

“Guess you’ll just have to nurse me back to health.”

He bites down on his lip hard and finds that he is thankful Gavin isn’t looking at his face right now, because he might not be able to handle the idea of taking care of a sick Gavin, delirious with sleep meds.

“You coming?” he says, rolling up the bottoms of his pants to his knees. “Or are you just gonna watch the water from over there?”

He suppresses his sigh, but not his eye roll and he copies Gavin. Shoes left by the edge, pants rolled up.

“I thought Hello Kitty was white,” he says, looking down at the socks Gavin tucks into his shoes. Patterned with a black cats face repeatedly. Familiar stylization.

“Hello Kitty _is_ white,” Gavin replies, not meeting Connor’s gaze. “That’s Chococat.”

“Chococat?”

“Yeah. That’s what I said.”

“Is…” he trails off, thinking a few weeks back to Tina. Her mischievous glance down to his feet, her threat. “Tina was going to blackmail you because you like Hello Kitty, wasn’t she?”

Gavin turns around to face him, taking a slow step backwards into the water. Connor can’t tell if the grimace that crosses his face is from the cold or from the fact he has uncovered his precious secret, “Maybe. And I’m not… _embarrassed_ by it, alright? But she was going to make it out worse than it is.”

“Worse?”

“Hello Kitty coffee maker, Hello Kitty iron, Hello Kitty dust pan.”

“Hello Kitty blanket?”

“I’ve got that.”

“Hello Kitty vacuum?”

“They don’t sell those,” Gavin says, and shifts his gaze from the water to Connor to the sand. “I... checked.”

“You checked?”

“They only make toy versions. With the little Styrofoam that bounces around?”

Connor nods as if he has any idea what Gavin is describing, “What about Hello Kitty boxers?”

Gavin laughs and shrugs his shoulders, “I’m only going to tell you the answer to make us even, alright?”

“Even for what?”

“The… sexbot thing,” he says, looking up to meet his eyes once more. His hand moves to his waist, pulling the shirt upwards as he takes another step backwards, pulling the band of his boxers up enough to show the white cat face printed repeatedly against a black background. “Happy?”

Connor has suddenly arrived at the conclusion that he isn’t sure at all if androids can blush, because he’s certain the heat in his face must be resulting in one. It has to be.

He takes a step forward into the cold water, following after Gavin in the hopes that the low temperature of the water will balance out his insides. He is a step away from him when Gavin slips, when he starts to fall.

“Gavin—”

 

He takes another step away. Connor is catching up to him and Gavin just needs to get away from him a little bit. The tiniest bit of distance. He just needs that space to clear his head because Connor looks cute bundled up like he is, and there’s a question on his lips, half asked _do androids get cold?_ But he is already tripping, his foot caught on a rock or some sunken toy a kid lost in the water and he is falling backwards but—

Connor is faster.

And there is a hand on his waist, pulling him to a stop, holding him far too close.

And he’s saying something. Gavin knows this because his eyes are stuck on Connor’s lips trying to fight the urge to kiss him but he can’t make out the words. He can only watch them move.

“W-What’d you say?” he asks, realizing he should listen and knowing he needs to buy time.

“You should watch your step. Maybe not walk backwards into a lake?”

“Right,” he whispers. “Sorry.”

Connor’s hand is still on his waist. He doesn’t want it to leave. The two of them are standing in complete silence and Connor is so close and the hand is so reassuringly warm on his side, keeping him from falling even though he’s already recovered his balance.

“Connor?”

It’s a mistake. He knows that. But he breaks the silence anyways. It shatters everything. Connor’s hand leaves him, he takes a small step back towards land and says, “How did you find me?”

_How did he find him?_

“T-Tracker,” he says, gesturing towards the LED. “The DPD has it enabled to make sure you don’t break their rules.”

“Oh,” Connor whispers. “Of course.”

“I should—I should get back,” Gavin says, walking past him quickly. “I have a case.”

“Right.”

He crosses over the threshold of water to dry sand and picks up his shoes, neither of them saying anything as he leaves. He can’t bring himself to look back. He can’t bring himself to see what Connor’s face looks like right now.

He can only think of the hand on his waist, the closeness of the two of them.

 _Shit._ Tina was right.

He’s in trouble.

 

_November 22 nd_

“What the fuck is this place?”

Connor bites back a smile and pushes the door open, glancing back only to see Gavin’s reaction as they step inside. He looks annoyed, but in an artificial way. A façade that he has put up expertly, crafted carefully and reused over and over again to the point where Connor can make out the cracks if he looks close enough.

And he does.

Along the edge of his mouth, where it fights to quirk up into a smile. In his eyes where they scan the place with interest he can’t drown. Even his nose wrinkles a little, as if in disgust, but Connor knows it comes from the fight to keep his features the way he wants them even though it’s a difficult task.

“It’s a café,” Connor says. “I thought you’d like it.”

“It’s a fucking Hello Kitty themed café, Connor,” he says with a sigh.

_A sigh._

But even that isn’t frustrated. Even that isn’t clouded with anger.

It has the smallest trace of a laugh in it.

“I thought you’d like it,” Connor repeats as they step over to the counter.

Gavin’s hand brushes against his, and Connor thinks it might have been intentional, but he also knows how much he reads into things. He knows because Hank has told him over and over again the differences in lingering glances and accidental touches and they aren’t always romantic. He’s been built to understand the body language of criminals in interrogations so he can find their weak spots and put as much pressure and weight on it can until they crack, but it is a different kind of body language he knows. Built with heart beat monitors and stress levels and to see when someone is upset to the point of tears or ready to scream from anger.

Not _this._

Not attraction or flirting or something beyond guilt.

“I do,” Gavin says, lowering his voice for only Connor to hear. “Thanks.”

_Thanks._

 

Androids do not eat and they do not drink.

Connor has told him this before, but he also says _Thirium_ is different. It’s not a food. It’s not technically even a drink. It’s a liquid they can ingest, and with the combination of a few other very specific chemicals and ingredients, they can form a fake version of a food. But it’s rare. Thirium is toxic to humans. It can kill them if they ingest it. Too risky for most food places to bother trying to appeal to an android crowd.

But they have it here. A coffee imposter, tinted dark enough to almost drown out the blue, served hot and sitting in front of Connor because Gavin convinced him to try it.

He watches Connor sip at it, barely touching his own. There’s two cupcakes on the plate in front of him and a paper to-go bag containing donuts and cookies wrapped up in wax paper for Tina so she doesn’t complain that he left her out of this trip.

And he knows what she would say if she were here.

_Kiss him._

And he wants to.

Fucking _God_ does he want to but—

Connor is an android. Gavin held a gun at his head. They are sitting side by side in front of a window overlooking the nearly-empty street outside. Connor is talking, his eyes focused on the table, the sprinkles on the top of the cupcakes and where a few litter the table because Gavin wasn’t as careful in his eating as he should have been.

He’s paying attention to Connor’s words, but only vaguely. His gaze is stuck on him and his thoughts are all bundled up inside of his chest and they are spilling out like a tsunami and he can’t keep them back.

He leans over, his hand reaching out to Connor’s chin.

_Kiss him._

“Connor?”

He says his name, but his touch had already made Connor look over at him, and he realizes that Connor’s eyes are on his lips too.

He isn’t pulling away.

_He isn’t pulling away._

They stay like that for a moment. Gavin thinking about how easy it would be to lean forward and kiss him, about how much he’d rather Connor kiss him first so he doesn’t have to make a fool of himself if (when) he gets rejected, but he also thinks of how Connor wouldn’t care about him—not in that way. He might’ve hunted down the only Hello Kitty themed café in Detroit and brought him here, but that means nothing and—

“You have frosting on your lip,” Connor says, and then he _does_ move away. The slightest bit, the tiniest tug, his eyes move from Gavin’s face to the table again. _Sprinkles._ Five of them. Pink and blue and purple.

Gavin lets go of Connor and pulls back, dragging his thumb across his lips to remove the frosting. He doesn’t look back to Connor again. He keeps his focus on his coffee until they leave.

 

_December 29 th_

They’re on their way back from a case, music playing lightly over the speakers of his car, filling up the silence between them. It isn’t an _uncomfortable_ silence, though, and Gavin is painfully aware of this fact. He hasn’t had _comfortable_ silence with someone in years. The ability to just drive and not have to think about trying to say something to keep the nerves and tension from suffocating him.

Connor is just quiet. Maybe not exceptionally so, but he doesn’t go quiet from anxiety.

And Gavin?

He just feels free from the pressure of having to _speak_. The ease of just going quiet and not having to explain himself or reassure someone that he isn’t mad or upset.

Just. Quiet.

But it makes his mind wander.

Back to the café, where they nearly kissed, where Connor sipped a mug of hot Thirium like coffee and looked—

He forces his thoughts to shift, but they only land on Connor again.

Back to the beach, where they were so close together, he thinks, where Connor’s hand was on his waist and caught him from falling backwards and—

_Shut up._

Back to the park, where they nearly held hands, where Connor kept looking at him with that—

_Fucking fuck._

“There’s a bookstore,” he says suddenly, glancing from the red light to Connor. “Do you want to go before we head back? No one will know if we’re out longer than we should be.”

He didn’t think this through, he knows that even before Connor says _yes._

He is trying to quiet Connor from his thoughts, to minimize them until the two of them are nothing like they are in reality. To keep Connor pushed far, far back where he belongs. They will never be anything. It is hopeless to think of it as a possibility.

And what has he done?

Put them closer together. Had the time they share today stretch out even longer.

_Stupid, stupid boy._

 

“Don’t you have all the knowledge in the world at your fingertips or some shit?”

“Not fictional stories,” he says, taking a book from the shelf and turning it over to read the synopsis typed neatly on the back. “They aren’t deemed necessary to what a prototype would need, especially one working for the DPD.”

Connor looks over at him quick enough to see the smile on his face disappear, replaced with a blank stare. It must be more difficult trying to a keep a straight face than one composed by anger, but Connor won’t complain. If Gavin wants to hide his feelings, he can do so. At least this means he can’t even bring himself to pretend to be angry at Connor’s existence.

He sets the book back down again, looking towards the one beside it. _No,_ he thinks, he does not want to read mysteries. He gets enough gore and murder in his life as is. He’d like to explore fantasy worlds. They might not scientifically make sense, but he can at least pretend in some other universe the logic behind floating cities or clouds made of cotton candy _could_ be plausible.

“Gavin,” he says, wandering down the next aisle, turning back to face him. “Why did you bring me here if you thought it would be useless?”

He watches Gavin hesitate, and it bothers Connor in a way that it shouldn’t. A year ago, Gavin would roll his eyes and say something quick and dismissive like _fuck if I know_ and move along. He’s tentative in his response, choosing careful words.

It is going to be unnecessarily cruel or—

“I see you read all the time,” Gavin says, turning away, walking away from Connor to look at something else on the opposite side of the aisle, busy his hands with the science fiction side of the shelves. “Thought you might be in need of a new book.”

Connor was prepared for the worst.

He was prepared for something heavy and unwanted to sink down into the pit of his stomach and weigh him down.

Not _this._

“Gavin?” he says, taking a step towards him. Gavin doesn’t look up, his eyes are instead stuck on the novels in front of him. He stops beside him, his hand reaching out slowly towards Gavin’s. He wants to hold it, he wants to let Gavin know, in some small way, that he _cares._

His finger touches the side of his hand lightly and Gavin looks over to face him, whatever composure he had before is gone now. It’s like at the beach. There is no guard up in his eyes, or if there is it’s weak and easily broken by Connor’s ability to dissect ascertain the difference between anger and unknown.

“Con—”

“Good morning,” a worker says, brushing past them.

It’s enough for the two to leap apart. Gavin picks up a book from the shelf and takes a stumbling step backwards, “I’m gonna… go buy this.”

“Okay,” Connor says.

“Okay,” Gavin repeats, and he gives a little nervous laugh and it’s the first time Connor has ever heard him laugh and it hasn’t come out as a sarcastic bark. It’s—

_Cute._

“I’ll meet you at the car?”

“Yeah.”

Gavin turns and walks away, down the aisle towards the registers and Connor can’t help but watch him and think about how the book in his hand is number seven in a series that Gavin has likely never heard of.

 

He waits in the car with his arms crossed over the steering wheel and his gaze focused on the dashboard. Gavin’s fingers tap out a random rhythm, not keeping up with any type of tempo, just an action to distract his thoughts from how close he was to holding Connor’s hand.

He jumps at the sound of a knock on his window and he looks up to Connor bent down to look back to him. Gavin lets out a small sigh and reaches to his door, unlocking the passenger seat for him.

Connor settles inside, a bag in his lap, “I got something for you.”

“Y-You what?”

“The cashier asked me if it was for my daughter,” he says with a smile, reaching into the bag. “And I told her it was for you instead.”

“And?”

Connor holds out the small plushie towards him. A black cat, brown nose, blue collar—

“Chococat, right?” Connor asks.

“Yeah,” Gavin says, taking it from his hands. It’s soft against his fingertips and it makes his head and his heart hurt with the want to cry.

“She asked me if you were my boyfriend.”

“Wait, what?” he asks, looking up from it to see Connor’s face. Gavin is sure his face is red. He can feel how hot his cheeks are. And Connor in contrast looks so cool and composed. _Stupid androids._ It’s unfair. “W-what did you say?”

“That I wasn’t sure,” he replies. “Are you?”

_Is he?_

No.

They aren’t.

This isn’t—this isn’t a _date_ as much as Gavin wants it to be. Dates require more planning and more precision than going to the bookstore last second. It’s just an outing. They haven’t held hands. They don’t kiss. Connor probably barely even likes him.

But he can’t get himself to say _no._

“Do you want me to be?”

His heart is racing in his chest. Too fast for him to be able to handle. He wants it to slow down. He wants it to go back to normal or stop entirely because it would be preferable to the hanging balance of silence stuck between them.

And then—

Connor smiles and he says,

“Yes.”

 

_December 31 st_

Connor spots Gavin from the edge of the park and he makes his way through the crowd towards him, wondering if the feeling in his stomach is a normal android function. Humans describe it as butterflies and he has never felt more glad that they have labeled something so appropriately. It is as if every single one that has ever existed and will ever exist has made it’s way to his abdomen and are fluttering their wings against him.

“Gavin,” he says, wondering for a moment if he’s said it too quietly, but he hasn’t. Gavin looks over at him with an expression that is a completely different look than Connor has ever seen on his face before. No guards, no anger, no false blankness.

His face _lights up—_ and Connor is happy humans have declared it that, too. It is fitting. His eyes go from bored and unfocused to taking in Connor’s jacket and scarf and his lips turn up into a smile that he isn’t bothering to hide.

“Hey, Con,” he says, and then his cheeks, already flushed from the cold, turn a little redder. “Connor. Sorry.”

“No, I like Con,” he replies. “I’ve never had a nickname before.”

“Tin-can doesn’t quite suit you as a nickname?”

Connor bites his lip and glances down, “No, not really.”

“Hey, sorry,” Gavin says, and his voice has dropped heavily from its light tone. “Really. I treated you like shit. I don’t know why you want me to be your boyfriend.”

“Because you’re not like that,” he glances up to meet his gaze again. Soft gray-blue, washed out and dark in the light provided only by occasional streetlamps. “You’ve changed.”

And, he doesn’t want to hold things against people that happened when he was a machine, either.  He knows there is a different thought process when people think of him as a replaceable piece of plastic. He knows that when they looked at him and thought that their actions didn’t have consequences, they did things they shouldn’t have.

 _Hank_ killed him.

Gavin didn’t, but he _could_ have.

He wishes none of what happened during his time as a machine existed at all.

He knows it is unhealthy and a bad mentality to pretend it’s not real, but he can’t handle thinking about it now, even a year later, even with everything better. It is too difficult. He cannot dwell on the negative, he needs to think and focus on only the positive.

And there is plenty of time in the future when they are a little bit more solid and a little less new to deal with their past mistakes.

Connor reaches out and touches his hand, feeling the soft fabric of his gloves and his bare fingertips. Gavin takes his hand, slowly, squeezing lightly. It makes him look down at his hand and he smiles and has to hold back a laugh.

“What? What’s so funny?”

“You have Hello Kitty gloves.”

“Yeah, so?”

“They’re _fingerless_ Hello Kitty gloves. What’s even the point? Your hands are freezing.”

“It’s called fashion,” he leans forward, lowering his voice to a whisper. “If you want to be my boyfriend, you’re going to have to understand that.”

“Gavin?”

“What?”

“Can you…” he trails off, looking up as the sky explodes in light and noise above and the chatter around them quiets a little. It makes his own voice grow softer, leaning a little bit closer to Gavin. “Can you kiss me? Or do you want to talk more about your gloves?”

“What a shitty ultimatum…” Gavin replies, trailing off a little bit at the end.

And for a moment, he doesn’t know what Gavin is going to do. For a split second, it seems as if Gavin is going to surprise him and start talking about something else and Connor will be forced to silence him himself.

But he doesn’t.

He just hesitates for that brief time.

And then his hand is on his cheek, fingers brushing over his LED, moving to the back of his neck. There is a question on his face, written plain as dead but completely unspoken.

_Are you sure this is what you want?_

Connor nods, but it doesn’t encapsulate all that he wants it to.

_Yes. Absolutely._

It’s enough either way for Gavin to pull him down a little, to lean up the rest of the way, to kiss him for the first time. Soft and sweet and enough to make the butterflies inside his stomach alight in a terrible yet pleasant flutter again. He can feel Gavin smiling against his lips, and he smiles too. He holds onto him tight, feeling the cold leather against his fingertips as places a hand at his back and tugs him that last little bit to his chest.

 _Ye_ s.

This is _exactly_ what he wants.


End file.
